MOYU founders Roel Schatorjé (right) and Paul Sintnicolaas

Did you know that 55% of the world’s paper comes from newly cut trees?¹ Or that it takes 10 litres of water to produce a single A4-sheet of paper?¹ Although many aspects of our lives are becoming increasingly digital and paperless, an estimated 409 million metric tons of paper was consumed in 2021.²

The environmental impact of the paper industry provided the inspiration for MOYU, the business Roel Schatorjé launched in late-2019 with co-founder Paul Sintnicolaas. MOYU sells notebooks that are made from stone paper – a calcium carbonate-based alternative to paper made from wood pulp – that are reusable up to 500 times.

“We talk a lot about single-use plastics but we don’t talk about single-use paper,” says Schatorjé.

The founders initially aimed to supply businesses with notebooks for their offices. “We knew that 50% of office waste is still paper. We also know that also a lot of notes made in offices, often you don’t really need them after a week. So our main focus was to make companies aware of the paper industry and help them with a solution,” Schatorjé explains.

But as the Covid-19 pandemic pushed office employees to work from home, they were forced to take a different route. “We pivoted to consumer market. We built a web shop and launched some new products, like a desk planner to help people working from home,” said Schatorjé. “I think the whole pivot in the end was quite good, because by making consumers aware of the paper industry and the alternatives, we saw a lot of them introduce our products to their employers. So at the end of that year we still had a lot of business orders.”

Despite the challenges of running a business in a pandemic, MOYU has grown significantly in a short time, hiring an international sales team in 2021 to focus on developing the company in France, Germany and Austria. On top of that, MOYU picked up the Sustainability Champion award and €15,000 as part of the FedEx Small Business Grant 2021 competition.

Here, Schatorjé shares the lessons he’s learned from persuading customers to rethink an everyday product and choose a sustainable alternative instead.

As well as selling a product that helps to solves an environmental problem, MOYU also helps by planting a tree for every one of its product sold, via a Kenyan non-government organisation called Trees for Kenya. “For us, it’s part of our story,” says Schatorjé. “People say, ‘we love that you plant a tree’. If you only look at the cost side of it, it probably wouldn’t be worth it, but it really adds to your branding.”

For Schatorjé though, helping the environment is more a responsibility than a sales tactic. “You can’t be a business at this point in time, with how the world looks now, and not do anything [to benefit the environment],” he says. “Businesses exist to solve problems in the world and I think the biggest problem that we have is the environmental crisis.”

Schatorjé started out by trying to drive awareness about the environmental impact of the paper industry. But he quickly realised that the messaging wasn’t landing with customers. “We found it has a sort of negative effect on people; it doesn’t really persuade them to buy,” he says.

But he didn’t want to lose it from MOYU’s messaging altogether. “I found it really relevant to make people aware of the paper industry,” he says. “It would be a waste if people did not get that part of the message.” Now, MOYU explains the environmental impact of the paper industry, and how stone paper can be a benefit, to customers after they’ve bought something – not before.

After realising that the sustainability message wasn’t helping to convert customers, Schatorjé focused instead on what MOYU’s customers loved about their notebooks. “I think from our product, people just really love that they have just one notebook that they can use for a very long time, for everything,” he says. “The fact that you can have a to-do list and at the end of the day you can clean it away, gave you this feeling of being in control – I think this really triggered people.”

He likens it to high profile companies. “What’s the reason people buy a Tesla? It has a sustainable benefit – but the main benefit is in the car itself. It looks good, it drives well, it works amazingly.”

At just under €27, MOYU’s notebooks may cost more than a standard paper notebook, but Schatorjé points out that it is still great value. “It lasts 500 times longer, so in the end you save money,” he says.

Plus, the price point is still low enough to make it an impulse purchase for many customers, he says: “Because it’s like €27, you’re not going to do hours of research for that, you’ll just buy it and try it.”

One thing Schatorjé noticed while trying to create awareness on social media about the damage caused by paper production was the amount of negative responses. “For some reason which I still find interesting, consumers are extremely critical of businesses that claim to be sustainable,” he says. “When we did all these campaigns [about the environmental impact of paper] we saw so many negative comments.”

As consumers are becoming increasingly used to greenwashing tactics, more are suspicious as to whether companies using their sustainability credentials as a selling point are as honourable as they say.